Strangely later last evening I successfully installed one update. It hung on the next one but after I went through the list sequentially and each one did install albeit slowly. as you might imagine it was a late night and i still have a C++ related update to install.
When i get home I will try posting from the log----FWIW I had already stopped automatic updates. I previously had a problem with a daylight savings related update that woudl not install although it did not apply to my time zone and that problem was apparently common according to Microsoft support. i have been manually authorizing them ever sice just as a way of monitoring what might be making it fail---although all was fine until last week.